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Estranged from her sister and her three children, she had five grandchildren that she never even met.

She was not invited to the wedding of her youngest daughter, 47-year-old Camilla, and claimed not to even know the identity of the husband of her oldest daughter Frances, 52.

“Frances didn’t tell me she was married,” she said recently.

“I don’t really know to whom because I have no contact with them at all. Camilla told me when she was engaged but I wasn’t invited to her wedding.

GETTY

Lady Lucan married Lord Lucan in 1963, before his disappearance in 1974

“I happened to be walking past the church when a photographer spotted me, rushed over and said: ‘Lady Lucan, it’s your daughter’s wedding!’ I put my umbrella up and rushed home.”

According to Michael Waldman, who interviewed her for a documentary about the Lucan case aired earlier this year, she was “vivacious” and “good company” in her final weeks and found some closure through unburdening herself about the case after such a long time.

For the past 40 years she lived alone in a two-bedroom mews cottage almost adjacent to the former family home in which the murdered body of nanny Sandra Rivett was found.

If Lucan had intended to kill her, as she has always claimed, it seems that he at least succeeded in ruining her life.

For 43 years she remained trapped and defined by his crime, at the cost of her family, fortune and, almost, sanity. To all intents and purposes she was his final victim.

The disappearance of Lord Lucan has been called the greatest mystery of the 20th century.

A reckless gambler and notorious fixture of the London aristocracy, he and Veronica married in 1963 but after the birth of their children the marriage broke down.

She has described how he would beat her with a cane for his own sexual gratification, as well as abuse her verbally and attempt to have her admitted to psychiatric institutions.

TOPHAM PICTUREPOINT/PA

Lord Lucan murdered Sandra Rivett in 1974 before fleeing. He has never been seen of since.

In 1972 he moved out of the family home to the mews cottage and she was granted custody of the children.

But it was the night of November 7, 1974, that was to define them for ever.

As she watched TV in her bedroom, he entered the house and bludgeoned Rivett to death.

According to the late Countess she disturbed him in the act and he hit her four times with the piping.

She fled to the local pub to raise the alarm while he escaped in a borrowed car which was later found abandoned in the port of Newhaven, East Sussex.

His body has never been found and in the decades since, myths and conspiracy theories have abounded with supposed sightings reported in far-flung locations such as Goa in India, South Africa and New Zealand.

In 1975 an inquest found Lucan to be Rivett’s killer.

Last year he was officially declared presumed dead, meaning son George, 50, could assume his father’s title.

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Lady Lucan spent the final years of her life in isolation, estranged from her family

But if the lack of a body for the murderous earl has fuelled the mystery of his disappearance all these years, it also haunted his wife at great cost to her sanity.

“I was pushed to the brink of madness,” she said. “I had injections [of anti-psychotic drugs] and their side-effects were horrible. I had hallucinations, restlessness – I walked for miles – and drug-induced Parkinson’s.”

She fell out with her sister Christina Shand Kydd and, worst of all, in 1982 lost custody of her children.

“I received an affidavit sent through the post while my three children were all at boarding school in which my 15-year-old son declared that he would find it ‘much more congenial to live as part of the family of his uncle and aunt’,” she wrote on her website ladylucan.co.uk.

“I did not attend the hearing and I did not apply for access either.”

The rift never healed and both George and Camilla have questioned their mother’s version of events.

Five years ago George declared: “I’ve always thought it extraordinarily unlikely my father went into our home, wandered down and killed anybody with a piece of lead piping.”

Veronica lived out her final years still defined by her husband’s actions.

Lonely, estranged from her family and unable even to afford a computer, she got by on a state pension, recently bemoaning plans to withdraw her winter fuel allowance: “My heart sank when I heard I wouldn’t be eligible for the £300 fuel payment,” she said.

She was also, it seems, unable to move on with her life. In June she gave a TV interview in which she once again relived the night of Rivett’s death.

Perhaps saddest of all, it is that interview that provides what might be the real reason Lady Lucan remained forever imprisoned by a past she chose not to escape.